By Frederick Dawkins and Douglas Weiner
Earlier this month, at the ABA Labor and Employment Law Conference, Solicitor of Labor M. Patricia Smith reaffirmed that investigating independent contractors as misclassified remains a top priority of the U.S. Department of Labor’s (“DOL”) enforcement initiatives. The DOL will continue to work with other federal and state agencies, including the IRS, to share information and jointly investigate claims of worker misclassification. The joint enforcement effort is certainly driven by, among other things, an interest in collecting unpaid tax revenue, and could result in significant liability to employers.
In addition to potential liability resulting from strengthened federal enforcement initiatives, in previous blog posts, we have emphasized that misclassification could become the subject of the next wave of class and collective actions, particularly in view of states enacting new legislation providing for higher penalties. Further, the re-election of President Obama may augur the re-emergence of the Employee Misclassification Prevention Act, would require employers to keep records of all workers performing labor or services for them, and to notify each worker of their classification and exemption status. Finally, the Affordable Care Act (“ACA”) adds yet another challenge to employee misclassifications as the reclassification of workers from independent contractors to employees could push an employer over the 50 full-time employee threshold for ACA coverage.
The expenses of misclassification are often significant – including calculations of unpaid overtime wages, back employment taxes, income tax withholdings, unpaid workers’ compensation and unemployment insurance premiums, contributions to Social Security and Medicare, and perhaps 401K matching and pension contributions.
In short, over the next four years of the Obama Administration, which will continue to fund the DOL’s aggressive enforcement efforts, it is undeniable that contractor misclassification investigations will continue to increase in volume and strength. Employers are best advised to scrutinize their own independent contractor classifications in self-audits before federal and state investigators, or perhaps even worse, plaintiffs’ class action lawyers target what had been common practices.